The Daughters of Danaus Part 52

Professor Fortescue held that woman's "goodness" had done as much harm in the world as men's badness. The one was merely the obverse of the other.

"This is strange teaching!" cried Lady Engleton.

The Professor reminded her that truth was always stranger than fiction.

"To the best men," observed Valeria, "women show all their meanest qualities. It is the fatality of their training."

Professor Theobald had noted the same trait in other subject races.

"Pray, don't call us a subject race!" remonstrated Lady Engleton.

"Ah, yes, the truth," cried Hadria, "we starve for the truth."

"You are courageous, Mrs. Temperley."

"Like the Lady of Shallott, I am sick of shadows."

"The bare truth, on this subject, is hard for a woman to face."

"It is harder, in the long run, to waltz eternally round it with averted eyes."

"But, dear me, why is the truth about ourselves hard to face?" demanded Valeria.

"I am placed between the horns of a dilemma: one lady clamours for the bare truth: another forbids me to say anything unpleasing."

"I withdraw my objection," Valeria offered.

"The ungracious task shall not be forced upon unwilling chivalry," said Hadria. "If our conditions have been evil, some scars must be left and may as well be confessed. Among the faults of women, I should place a tendency to trade upon and abuse real chivalry and generosity when they meet them: a survival perhaps from the Stone Age, when the fittest to bully were the surviving elect of society."

Hadria's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement.

"Freedom alone teaches us to meet generosity, generously," said Professor Fortescue; "you can't get the perpendicular virtues out of any but the really free-born."

"Then do you describe women's virtues as horizontal?" enquired Miss Du Prel, half resentfully.

"In so far as they follow the prevailing models. Women's love, friends.h.i.+p, duty, the conduct of life as a whole, speaking very roughly, has been lacking in the quality that I call perpendicular; a quality implying something more than _upright_."

"You seem to value but lightly the woman's acknowledged readiness for self-sacrifice," said Lady Engleton. "That, I suppose, is only a despised horizontal virtue."

"Very frequently."

"Because it is generally more or less abject," Hadria put in. "The sacrifice is made because the woman is a woman. It is the obeisance of s.e.x; the acknowledgment of servility; not a simple desire of service."

"The adorable creature is not always precisely obeisant," observed Theobald.

"No; as I say, she may be capricious and cruel enough to those who treat her justly and generously" (Hadria's eyes instinctively turned towards the distant Priory, and Valeria's followed them); "but ask her to sacrifice herself for nothing; ask her to cherish the selfishness of some bully or fool; a.s.sure her that it is her duty to waste her youth, lose her health, and stultify her mind, for the sake of somebody's whim, or somebody's fears, or somebody's absurdity, _then_ she needs no persuasion. She goes to the stake smiling. She swears the flames are comfortably warm, no more. Are they diminis.h.i.+ng her in size? Oh no--not at all--besides she _was_ rather large, for a woman. She smiles encouragement to the other chained figures, at the other stakes. Her reward? The sense of exalted worth, of humility; the belief that she has been sublimely virtuous, while the others whom she serves have been--well the less said about them the better. She has done her duty, and sent half a dozen souls to h.e.l.l!"

Henriette uttered a little cry.

"Where one expects to meet her!" Hadria added.

Professor Theobald was chuckling gleefully.

Lady Engleton laughed. "Then, Mrs. Temperley, you _do_ feel rather wicked yourself, although you don't admire our nice, well-behaved, average woman."

"Oh, the mere opposite of an error isn't always truth," said Hadria.

"The weather has run to your head!" cried Henriette.

Hadria's eyes kindled. "Yes, it is like wine; clear, intoxicating sparkling wine, and its fumes are mounting! Why does civilisation never provide for these moments?"

"What would you have? A modified feast of Dionysius?"

"Why not? The whole earth joins in the festival and sings, except mankind. Some frolic of music and a stirring dance!--But ah! I suppose, in this tamed England of ours, we should feel it artificial; we should fear to let ourselves go. But in Greece--if we could fancy ourselves there, shorn of our little local personalities--in some cla.s.sic grove, on sunlit slopes, all bubbling with the re-birth of flowers and alive with the light, the broad all-flooding light of Greece that her children dreaded to leave more than any other earthly thing, when death threatened--could one not imagine the loveliness of some garlanded dance, and fancy the naads, and the dryads, and all the hosts of Pan gambolling at one's heels?"

"Really, Mrs. Temperley, you were not born for an English village. I should like Mrs. Walker to hear you!"

"Mrs. Walker knows better than to listen to me. She too hides somewhere, deep down, a poor fettered thing that would gladly join the revel, if it dared. We all do."

Lady Engleton dwelt joyously on the image of Mrs. Walker, cavorting, garlanded, on a Greek slope, with the nymphs and water-sprites for familiar company.

Lady Engleton had risen laughing, and proposed a stroll to Hadria.

Henriette, who did not like the tone the conversation was taking, desired to join them.

"I never quite know how far you are serious, and how far you are just amusing yourself, Hadria," said Lady Engleton. "Our talking of Greece reminds me of some remark you made the other day, about Helen. You seemed to me almost to sympathize with her."

Hadria's eyes seemed to be looking across miles of sea to the sunny Grecian land.

"If a slave breaks his chains and runs, I am always glad," she said.

"I was talking about Helen."

"So was I. If a Spartan wife throws off her bondage and defies the laws that insult her, I am still more glad."

"But not if she sins?" Henriette coughed, warningly.

"Yes; if she sins."

"Oh, Hadria," remonstrated Henriette, in despair.

"I don't see that it follows that Helen _did_ sin, however; one does not know much about her sentiments. She revolted against the tyranny that held her shut in, enslaved, body and soul, in that wonderful Greek world of hers. I am charmed to think that she gave her countrymen so much trouble to a.s.sert her husband's right of owners.h.i.+p. It was at _his_ door that the siege of Troy ought to be laid. I only wish elopements always caused as much commotion!" Lady Engleton laughed, and Miss Temperley tried to catch Hadria's eye.

"Well, that _is_ a strange idea! And do you really think Helen did not sin? Seriously now."

"I don't know. There is no evidence on that point." Lady Engleton laughed again.

"You do amuse me. a.s.suming that Helen did not sin, I suppose you would (if only for the sake of paradox) accuse the virtuous Greek matrons--who sat at home, and wove, and span, and bore children--of sinning against the State!"